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Pop Culture and the Decline of Thrifting

Pop Culture and the Decline of Thrifting

When I still lived in Boston I was an avid thrift shop enthusiast.  Thrift shops exist in a strange space halfway between antique store and garage sale.  And I loved every moment of shopping in them.  While it was rare to find a truly valuable treasure in the vast aisles of secondhand merchandise, mid-century modern kitchenware, furniture and other household goods from the 1950s and 1960s were always available in abundance.

There was one specific Salvation Army thrift store located on the outskirts of Boston that I often visited. Due to unique circumstances, it carried the best secondhand items of any thrift store in the area.  It was close enough to the wealthy neighborhoods to receive their cast-offs – stately brass candlesticks, vintage Pyrex glassware, retro porcelain dishware and lots of secondhand designer clothing.

The prices are ultimately what made the experience, though.  Who can resist funky fresh vintage mid-century modern items at $0.50 to $3 each?  It was a thrifting paradise.

Then the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 hit and the thrifting world was turned upside down.  In the wake of the recession my preferred thrift shop – a previously reliable source of great vintage pieces – gradually became a barren wasteland.  All of the older items disappeared in less than 12 months.  Suddenly the store was overrun with low quality pieces from the 1980s and 1990s.  This meant there was a lot more plastic and particleboard and a lot less brass, glass and porcelain.

After a few years of going back to the shop every few months vainly hoping for a reversion to normalcy, I finally gave up.  The good vintage stuff was gone and it was never coming back.  This unfortunate trend was a universal phenomenon too, repeated in every other thrift shop I visited after the Great Financial Crisis.

It took me a long time, but I finally came up with a theory to explain the decline of thrifting.  The primary factor was the financial crisis.  People who used to donate massive amounts of “old” household “junk” now didn’t have the disposable funds to renovate or redecorate their houses any longer.

In addition, those who continued to make donations to thrift shops now examined everything with an eagle eye to ensure they didn’t accidentally part with anything valuable.  They weren’t going to give away anything of even modest value.

I also think demographics played a secondary role in the decline of thrifting.  The elderly move to nursing homes and die at statistically predictable ages.  Because their estates are also partially or fully liquidated during these events, any vintage or antique items they owned are auctioned, sold or donated at the same time.

These estate items are of a predictable age as well, generally no more than 60 years old.  Around 2010, this demographic truth finally started to catch up with thrift shops as the supply of 1950s and early 1960s vintage items from estate sources began thinning out dramatically.  For those who are interested, my article entitled “The Demographics of Antiques” delves into this topic in greater depth.

The Great Financial Crisis prompted an entirely new clientele to explore thrift shops, too.  Shoppers who before had never before strayed from the staid halls of Banana Republic, J. Crew or the Gap now boldly ventured out in search of a bargain.  It’s tough to beat prices of $2 or $3 for a pair of trendy jeans or a nice blouse.  This phenomenon goes hand in hand with the rise of Hipsters, who wouldn’t be caught dead shopping anywhere but thrift stores.

It is no coincidence that the song “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (featuring Wanz) was released in 2012.  This chart topping, hip-hop anthem features caustic social commentary on the cookie cutter look of ridiculously expensive designer clothing while glorifying the thrifting experience as a great way to acquire clothing that is inexpensive, stylish and unique.  The song’s video is a pop cultural phenomenon, as demonstrated by the fact that it is currently approaching one billion views on YouTube.

I think it’s safe to say that thrifting is no longer the little-known, underground activity it used to be.  No wonder it’s impossible to find good vintage items in thrift stores today!

Why Good Antique Stores Go Bad

Why Good Antique Stores Go Bad

In the mid 1990s a small town I lived near was experiencing a full-fledged economic revival.  As part of this renaissance, the former Murphy’s Five and Dime building downtown had been leased to an antique cooperative.  And what an antique store it was!  It had everything from Victorian to mid-century American pieces and all at very reasonable, if not ridiculously low, prices.

I would buy little plastic zip-lock sandwich bags stuffed full of junk jewelry for a quarter.  Yes, you read that right – only 25 cents.  Only the “junk” jewelry wasn’t always junk.  These grab bags were peppered with sterling silver items – rings, necklaces and bracelets among others.  There was even the occasional solid karat gold piece.

So I did what any good antique truffle pig would do.  I kept going back for more.  Over the next several years I probably visited that antique store dozens of times.  Each time I put down a $10, $20, or very rarely a $50 bill in front of the cashier and in return walked away with a small (or sometimes large) pile of treasures.  But then, very gradually, the deals stopped being quite as good.  I had to dig progressively deeper into the dusty corners and dark niches to find my next treasure.

And then, one sad day, the deals were gone.  A couple years later the antique store closed.  I had thought that we had a good thing going.  What happened?  Why do good antique stores go bad?

The short answer is that I, and people like me, mined the store out.  Like a horde of locusts descending on a lush field of ripe grain, we stripped it clean.  I purchased every 25 cent junk jewelry bag the antique store had.  First I chose the ones with the best looking contents, gradually working my way down the stack until there were none left.  And the antique dealers simply couldn’t replace their inventory at anywhere near the same prices.

I suspect that most of those unbelievably cheap antiques came from local estate sales.  There was a large elderly population in town at the time and I think a lot of the executors administering these estates just didn’t want to be bothered.  They let the antique dealers clean out the estates’ houses for a pittance, just so they could move on quickly with their lives.  This allowed the dealers to turn around and sell junk jewelry bags for a quarter.

But it could only last as long as the cheap estate sales kept coming.  Once those tapered off, there was no more 25 cent inventory to be found.  There is a powerful lesson to be drawn from this experience.  The antique and art market is a living, breathing thing.  Those items that only cost a few dollars today may become completely unavailable tomorrow, except at exorbitant prices.  And yes, sometimes good antique stores go bad.

The Halcyon “Shotgun Days” of Antique Investing

The Halcyon "Shotgun Days" of Antique Investing

Investing in antiques is not – to put it politely – considered mainstream at the current time.  Contrary to first impressions however, this state of affairs is actually a good thing.  It allows savvy investors to acquire investment-grade antiques for low – sometimes ridiculously low – prices.  And yet, despite how opportunity laden the field of antique investing might be today, it is nothing compared to the halcyon era of the mid to late 1990s.

The golden age of antique investing was 15 to 20 years ago.  At the time, gold traded at less than a quarter of its current value – around $300 a troy ounce – while silver spent most of its time hovering near $5 a troy ounce.  No one cared about precious metals – or any other tangible investment for that matter – and this complete disinterest translated into phenomenal deals in antique stores.  During this period it was possible to walk into an antique store with only one or two hundred dollars in your pocket and walk out with multiple investment-grade antiques!  These were what I term the “shotgun days” of fine antique investing.  Investment-grade antiques were so ignored and underpriced during this time that a good antique store would have fine, investment-grade antiques strewn everywhere.  If you walked into such a shop and fired an imaginary shotgun randomly, you would always hit something worth buying.

It almost didn’t matter what you bought – sterling silver hollowware, Edwardian jewelry, old gold pocket watches – everything was an investment gem that, at a bare minimum, tripled or quadrupled in value over the next decade or two.  A discerning eye was always useful to help find the true diamonds in the rough.  But even “messing up” and buying a subpar antique didn’t mean you lost money.  It only meant you didn’t make as much as you could have otherwise.

One coin dealer in business at the time confided to me that “When gold was trading at $275 an ounce I couldn’t give gold bullion coins away.  No one wanted them.”  Fine antiques were treated no better than gold bullion; both were shunned in a similar manner.  Antique stores would have mountains of beautiful antique American sterling silver flatware for sale for $10 apiece, if not less!  A highly desirable vintage mechanical chronograph wristwatch might sit abandoned in a dusty pile of junk with a $35 price tag on it.  It was as easy as paying the dealer a pittance and taking your newfound treasure home.  The dealers didn’t care.  They just wanted to move the inventory and pocket their $5, $10 or $20 profit per item.  And so it went.

I instinctively understood just how great the bargains were, but, as a broke college student, a hundred dollars was far more than I usually had in my checking account at any given time.  This was torture for me as I was unable to buy much.  Instead I window shopped and feverishly plotted.  If I had only had two or three thousand dollars I could have assembled an investment portfolio of fine antiques to equal any pharaoh’s hoard.  As frustrating as that experience was for me, it forced me to really ponder the fundamental rules of investing in antiques.  Today you can profit from my hard-won past experience.  Believe me when I say that investment-grade antiques are still incredibly inexpensive, even after tripling or quadrupling in price.

The Bittersweet Goodbye of the Physical Antique Store

The Bittersweet Goodbye of the Physical Antique Store

The decline of physical antique stores in the United States has been brutal and swift.  In the late 1990s – a mere 20 years ago – almost every small town, rural outpost and city neighborhood had one or more quaint antique shops.  But the passing years have not been kind to these noble sentinels of the past.  While there are no hard statistics available, in my experience more than half of all physical antique stores have closed over the last couple of decades.  For example, see my article on The Great Boston Antique Store Massacre.  And these shops are not being replaced.  While there are several different factors behind the trend, it is an undeniable sea change in the industry.

Antique shops’ natural market, Baby Boomers, have begun their long march into the green pastures of retirement.  But a side effect of this situation is that many of the notoriously acquisitive generation are beginning to downsize their living arrangements.  And downsizing translates into selling stuff.  So collectibles, obsolete electronics, old exercise equipment and closets full of outdated clothing are going into Salvation Army donation bins or getting sold off for a few dollars at the local neighborhood garage sale.  And people who are liquidating stuff are not people who are buying stuff, especially not stuff from antique stores.

It is also difficult to overstate the impact that the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 has had on antique stores.  That massive financial dislocation gutted the market for dozens of collectible categories nearly overnight.  Few people today, in the wake of the economic disaster, have the discretionary income to indulge in unnecessary dust catchers anymore.  Before 2008, many collectible categories like glass, figurines, memorabilia, quilts, furniture, etc., used to be longtime mainstays of the antique industry.  But suddenly because of the crisis, antique dealers lost a large part of their regular sales.  And there was no product segment to fill the gap.  Add to that the pressure from continually rising commercial rents and soon many antique dealers found themselves in financial trouble.  Some dealers struggled on for a few years past the initial crash, hoping things would turn around.  But once it became clear that a recovery was not on the horizon, these holdout dealers finally capitulated and went out of business.

The last reason physical antique stores have largely disappeared is due to the rise of the internet.  As the pool of potential buyers has thinned, many antique dealers have migrated online, setting up shops on sites like Etsy, eBay or Ruby Lane.  Online stores have much lower overhead than physical stores, so fewer sales are needed to cover fixed expenses.  There is no rent to pay or sales staff to hire.  In addition, an online antique shop immediately gains access to potential buyers all over the world and can effortlessly consummate sales at any time of the day or night.  These advantages are the final nail in the coffin for physical antique stores, leading many dealers to close their storefronts and switch to selling online exclusively.

While it is obvious that most physical antique stores will be going the way of the dinosaurs, I do not think they will disappear altogether.  I imagine that some antique stores in urban areas with a large enough population density to support them will be able to soldier on, carving out solid niches in their communities.  These survivors will probably cater to the successful professional classes.  I expect they will tend to carry either high-quality, high-priced traditional antiques or funky, vintage upcycled decorative items.  They would be worth visiting, if you can find one and have the money to spare.

I also want to be clear that I do not believe the decline of the collectibles market or physical antique shops implies anything about the future prospects for investment grade antiques.  Yes, people have discovered that they can live happily with much less junk in their lives.  But investment grade antiques are not junk.  They are the best of the best in the antiques market – a highly selective group of dazzling art that drips with style and history.  And they are portable as well, so space is rarely a constraint.  The world of antique stores may be changing forever, but investment grade antiques still have a bright future ahead of them.